Manowar Class Armor

The Manowar Class Armor is the product of thousands of years of alien bioengineering.

At some point millennia in the past, the Spider Aliens, a race of blood-thirsty extraterrestrial arachnoids, discovered a semi-sentient silicon-based lifeform that was capable of acting as a living transducer that absorbed energy (and/or matter) and converted it into new forms. Seeking to harness this creature’s abilities, they set about combining its genetic code with other desirable traits from a diverse field of genetic material gathered from dozens of worlds, like bacterium capable of digesting and recycling biological wastes.

When the Spider Aliens had taken the new organism as far as it could go biologically, they began to tinker with it technologically. Using nano-technology, they added self-repair features and computational abilities. Eventually, this line of research led to the development of the Wolf Class armor – a multi-limbed, hard carapaced armor with limited capabilities.

Others continued along the biological path and encoded new abilities directly into the armor’s genetic structure, until they developed the Commando Class armor, which sprouts a spore every three hundred years from which scientists are able to create a new Commando class armor.

Using Commando Class armor as a genetic starting point, the aliens were able to engineer a golden spore that sprouted the first Manowar Class Armor. While this spore develops much slower, its capabilities are greatly enhanced, perhaps none more so than the ability to evolve to suit the wearer. The Manowar Class Armor can develop a new spore every two thousand years.

Contents

Shanhara

Shanhara is the name given to the Manowar Class Armor that Aric Dacia, a 5th Century Visigoth, steals from the Spider Aliens when he escapes from one of their vessels. As the name of the bipedal arachnoid that merged with the golden Manowar seed over ten thousand years ago has been lost, Shanhara refers to the merger of the two.

Shanhara has driven all that have donned it insane, which forces the Spider Aliens to inculcate individuality into their genetic make-up in order to cope with its artificial intelligence.

X-O Manowar

With help from the Map Giver, a fellow prisoner, Aric Dacia absconds the Spider Aliens’ vessel with their ultimate weapon, the X-O Manowar, a sentient armor that returns him to Earth in the last decade of the 20th Century. Though Aric is the most primitive man on the planet, he wields the most technologically advanced weapon in existence, and, as he struggles to adapt to the modern world, he prepares for when he can seek vengeance against his captors.

Retribution Prologue

Ten thousand years ago on the Spider Alien homeworld, a planet beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way Galaxy, two First-Among-Equals, the aliens’ spokesbeings, and their worshipers waited in an immense forest on the surface of the planet for the time to come for a large silicon-based plant to give birth to the golden Manowar seeds.

As its limbs moved, a first pointed excitingly up to the tree and alerted his companions that the time had come. While the firsts performed a ritual for an event they waited a millennia for, the worshippers worked in unison to form a small cradle device that would serve as a receptacle for the seeds using high-tech equipment and the bodily secretions from their hands and mouths. As the tree continued to move, its limbs wrapped around each other while the foliage fell by the side, the worshippers placed their cradle down near the base of the tree just as a small fissure opened and released two small pods. As the firsts led the others away in a single file with their boon and they boarded a hovercraft that flew away from the garden, the tree withered and died.

While the hovercraft descended on a landing platform, two High Priests stood nearby to receive the incoming party, and as the worshippers filed passed them with the pods, they performed a ritual. Making their way through the labyrinthine temple to the lower levels, the priests came upon a receptacle by a doorway and secreted a fluid from his fingers that opened the entrance. While the priests and worshippers made their way though the hangar deck, other arachnoids hurried to get two alien ships prepared for take-off.

Inside the red room in one of the ships, a priest stood vigil while his companion attached small metallic devices on a pod on the chest of a bipedal arachnoid. As the priests watched in amazement while the seed metamorphosed and increased in size, tendrils protruded from its center and groped about the room and integrated with different sections and devices, including the biped. As the pod took the shape of the upper body and helmet of Manowar Class armor and continued to make adjustments while it grew in size, it wrapped around the biped and their consciousness joined together. While the priests observed as the armor continued its integration and performed a ritual, their vessel assumed a standard orbit over the planet Earth.

Armor Specifications

Sealed Systems

The X–O Manowar class armor has the ability to conform itself to the wearer. The armor can provide nutrition, atmosphere, and waste removal using its matter to energy/energy to matter capabilities.

In addition, the armor has remote viewing capabilities through its free–floating probe. The probe is able to send back video and audio signals that the armor can interpret and display on the inside of the faceplate. Another viewer mounted on the left shoulder gives the wearer full rear viewing capabilities.

Propulsion

By cutting through a planet’s magnetic field, the X–O Manowar Class armor can accomplish Orbital (and near orbital) propulsion. By generating opposing magnetic forces, the armor slips through the surrounding magnetic field in much the same way that a bar of soap slips through your fingers in the shower.

Pushing against the planetary magnetic field accomplishes Intra–system space flight, boosting the armor (and its wearer) into space.

Operation

The X–O Manowar Class armor does not afford protection to its wearer in the conventional manner. That is, it does not take the damage of an attack and acts as a buffer between the wearer and the attacker. Instead, the armor can actually absorb energy directed against it. It can then re–channel this energy against its attackers. Because the armor absorbs such a broad spectrum of energy (kinetic, nuclear, electromagnetic, etc,) its power source is virtually limitless. Once absorbed this energy can be stored or channeled, but there is a limit. After the suit reaches its maximum capacity, any additional energy directed at it causes feed–back which can be harmful to the suit, even rendering it unconscious or dead. Some of that feed–back can also transfer to the wearer and prove fatal.

In addition to its armor protection, the suit has a number of offensive and defensive capabilities. The wearer directs these through one or more “ports” in the suit. There are three main weapons ports: the Omni–beam port (located on the right side of the chest carapace), and two twin Ion Cannon ports (located on the wrists).

The Ion Cannons produce an 80 MGHz pulsed ion beam of incredible destructive force; this beam can be tightened to a pencil thin stream, or used as an area of effect weapon with a cone-like projection.

The armor itself has a rudimentary sentience and a vast intelligence programmed with the science of the Spider Aliens. It possesses some telepathic abilities with a range limited to touch. Though the suit’s sensors are able to record the presence of nearby thought activity, direct telepathic communication is limited to the wearer.

Additional sensor arrays in the helmet allow the wearer to track a variety of wave emissions. Still others are capable of isolating various types of electromagnetic emissions such as radio waves, and electrical signatures, and the suit is equipped with remote sensors capable of gathering long distance intelligence.

The armor also has three types of flight abilities; gravimetric, propulsive, and (theoretically) relativistic. The suit hovers by manipulating gravitons (minute aspects of gravimetric energy). Pushing against the magnetic lines of force generated by the earth itself added to the propulsive power, while pushing against the nearest celestial body accomplishes near space flight. Relativistic, or near–light speed travel may also be possible through a still unknown method.

Secondary Systems

Two secondary systems exist for the X–O Manowar armor possessed by Aric Dacia. These are the control ring and the artificial arm worn by Ken Clarkson. The control ring is common to X–O suits of all classes. It allows the wearer remote access to the armor when it is not worn. The suit is able to home in on the ring virtually anywhere in the world (the exact range remains unknown since Aric has never reached its limits).

Ken Clarkson’s artificial arm is actually an extension of the suit, like the shoot of a plant. The suit (and its wearer) has complete control over the arm. In Aric’s case, it allows him to keep track of Ken at all times, and prevent any betrayal on his part.

Armor layers

Primary shell

This solid organo–metallic array, used in the carapace, gauntlet, and greaves, serves as a first line of defense for the wearer. The armor compound has the ability to withstand extreme temperatures and has a high degree of resiliency. Its main purpose is to house the technological and weapons systems of the X–O armor.

Secondary shell

This flexible endo–shielding makes up the majority of the X–O armor and serves as a supporting line of defense. The silicon metalloid mesh is most functional as an energy absorption unit for the armor.

Sensory interface net

This third layer, composed of silicon irons arranged in a coordination tissue array, serves as information exchange between wearer and armor. The X–O armor’s limited telepathic ability is dependent on tactile contact with the wearer. This contact facilitates the armor’s protection and healing functions.

Weapons

Omni-Beam

The Omni–beam has the ability to project several different fields with varying strengths. It can generate a defensive force field (which can deflect attacks too powerful to be absorbed by the armor), an energy–dampening field, or a graviton (tractor beams) field. It also has the ability to generate a coherent light beam that can provide simple illumination, or a beam of such strength that it can render a being of Solar’s power into his component atoms.

Ion Cannons

The Ion Cannons produce a 100 MGHz pulsed ion beam of incredible destructive force; this beam can be tightened to a pencil thin stream, or used as an area of effect weapon with a cone-like projection.